Miscellany: The Duh Edition

A conversation between Fort Awesome and I two weeks ago as we drove 45 minutes to hear Deborah Eisenberg read:

Fort Awesome: I liked that movie, but it reminded me of Ken Burns.

[long pause]

Terrible Mother: Who's Ken Burns?

Fort Awesome: Shut up.

Terrible Mother: What?

Fort Awesome: What the fuck is wrong with you? "Who's Ken Burns?"

Terrible Mother: What are you talking about?

Fort Awesome [voice rising]: Ken Burns! KEN BURNS! BASEBALL! JAZZ! THE DOCUMENTARIAN! THE KEN BURNS EFFECT! KEN FUCKING BURNS!

Terrible Mother: See, when you said "Ken Burns," I really thought "maybe 'Ken' is Mr. Burns first name."

[silence]

Terrible Mother: You know. From the Simpsons?

Fort Awesome: You cannot have a Master's degree. You cannot. There's been some terrible mistake*.

*****

An IM with Fort Awesome a week later:

Fort Awesome: I big heart Malcolm Gladwell- do you think he will marry me?

Terrible Mother: who is that?

Fort Awesome: holy shit

Terrible Mother: Oh God. I hate this game.

Fort Awesome: he writes** like every other month in the New Yorker!

Terrible Mother: I am now scarred, can't even begin to ask "who is that?" Because I know it's going to hurt when I don't know.

Fort Awesome: Can you at least recognize the name?

[long pause]

Terrible Mother: Yes?

Fort Awesome: Blink, Freakonomics***, The Tipping Point?

Terrible Mother: Are those essays he's written for the New Yorker?

Fort Awesome: They are books. Books.

Terrible Mother: Oh yeah. "Freakonomics." I think I read a review of that on Salon.

Fort Awesome: You're hopeless.

Terrible Mother: I'm not hopeless! I have a good memory for certain details! Conversations, for example.

Fort Awesome: Apparently no one you have ever known has talked about Ken Burns or Malcom Gladwell. Anyway, have you seen the preview for the movie based off So Much Water So Close to Home?

Terrible Mother: no

Fort Awesome: here

Terrible Mother: It looks fucking fabulous

Fort Awesome: please god tell me that's sarcasm

Terrible Mother: What? It looks good!

Fort Awesome: They've turned it into a thriller.

Terrible Mother: But I love Laura Linney****.

Fort Awesome: It's a dumb thriller.

Terrible Mother: But it's won awards. And all the awards have laurel leaves around their titles. I'm a sucker for the laurel leaf awards.

Fort Awesome: But it was this great quiet feminist story.

Terrible Mother: Really? Who wrote it?

[long pause]

Fort Awesome: Please stop talking.

Terrible Mother: Oh no. It's someone I should know isn't it?

Fort Awesome: Raymond Carver, TM. Raymond Fucking Carver.

Terrible Mother: I knew it sounded familar!

Fort Awesome: Ehud would kill you. If I ever want to be the favorite, I'll just email him this IM.

Terrible Mother: It's like the time I asked, "And who wrote The Seagull again?"

Fort Awesome: Please. Please just stop talking.

Terrible Mother: Done and done.

*****

Two years ago, at the end of a long conversation between Friends One and Two and me, I described a dramatic moment in class by saying "It was the epitome of dramatic. It was like that scene in The Karate Kid."

Friend One looked at us. "Which movie was that again?"

This caused Friend Two and I to look at each other aghast. Then we stood up at the same time. "You know, The Crane Kick," we were both saying, chattering over each other. And then in the middle of Allann Brothers Coffee, we started miming said Crane Kick. And all the while Friend One looked confused. "I'm not sure I've seen that movie before," she finally said, as Friend Two and I became more agitated, saying things out of order like "Sand the floors, Friend One!" and "Daniel-san!" and "Cobra KAI!"

I think we just confused Friend One more.

*tm

*And the entire evening of the reading, I kept asking people "Do you know who Ken Burns is?" trying to prove that someone else wasn't as lame as I was.

Did it work? No. It didn't. Not even a little.

** And he has a decent blog.

***Also, MG didn't write that book, which makes me simultaneously feel vindicated (Ha! Fort Awesome was wrong!) and lame (Oh. But that's the one I sort of knew about). It's like life. Only on a much smaller scale.

***Notice how I didn't get any credit for at least knowing who she is? See that? Shenanigans I say.

Comments

[Liza]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I'm glad I'm not the only one who sucks at that game. But because my own weakness does not prevent me from mocking others, can you name the story that the (actually abbreviated here) chain of HAs comes from? God, I'm mean.

[Friend R]

meh. Gladwell's not all that. He's a decent writer, but his books, while occasionally insightful, are heavy with anecdote and light on evidence. As such, they're good conversation fodder, but they're certainly not the last word on the subject. Until Gladwell's "insights" have some scientific backing (deductive rather than inductive), I'll continue to take his opinions as such. At the same time, you should at least know who he is since you have a subscription to the New Yorker. Score one (1) for FA.

You can be forgiven the Ken Burns thing. I'd wager most folks know about the Ken Burns Effect because they have Macs, not because they sat through 25+ hours of baseball minutiae. Score one (1) for *tm.

Score's tied. Wait. I just realized FA mentioned something about marrying Gladwell. Minus one (-1) to FA for poor taste. Woot! *tm wins. I expect some sort of reward for rescuing you from the ignominy of your ignorance, *tm.

[Kari]

Please advise Fort Meanie that the director of the film in question also directed "Lantana" and that was what you might call a "thriller" and I have seen it four times and it's a fabulous movie and I have faith that if anyone is going to make a Raymond Carver short story into a movie it might as well be Ray Lawrence.

Malcolm Gladwell is a pretty interesting writer but he is also one of those people who takes a novel approach to a very shallow concept and tries to convince you it's a revolutionary idea. "Blink" is a good example of what I mean.

Knowing the Simpsons but not Ken Burns? That is what makes you so terribly lovable.

[Kari]

Oh and Deborah Eisenberg? She wrote The Seagull, right? ;)

[Friend Omega]

First of all, "Freakonomics" is wonderful. It was written by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (I may have swapped a Stephen for a Steven and vice versa. Fuckem.) I just feel like they need credit.

Second of all, boo for judging the merits of a film by its genre. AFI has a hard-on for Raymond Lawrence for a reason: His films are very good. The screenwriter, Beatrix Christian, is a pretty good playwright with a pension for thrillers and suspense. Her play "Faust's House" is really quite lovely, and I have no reason to doubt that "Jindabyne" will be good until I see it for myself.

Thirdlyofall, "A conversation between Fort Awesome and I"? "This caused Friend Two and I to look at each other"? What the fuckles are you trying to do to me, lady?

[Terrible Mother]

Friend R: If your reward involves me reading your thesis for you, then sign me up.

Oh right. YOU ALREADY DID.

Pfft.

Kari: If I knit you a scarf with the likeness of Malcolm Gladwell on it, would you still love me then? Hmmm?

Liza: Oh, it hurts when you laugh at me. HURTS!

Omega: When you use a word like "fuckles" on I it makes myself laugh.

[fort gladwell]

there are some very important rewordings here terrible m - that make me look bad - and some omissions as well.
as for the rest of you
do not speak ill of the gladwell!

[belgium]

Re: Ft. Gladwell:

We, of course, dwell on the superficial. For example, said Gladwell's blog has not been updated for almost three months. That, well, doesn't make us very glad.

We, of course, could do without the hair.

(http://www.gladwell.com/media/index.html)

We, of course, are put off by the fact that he was born in England. Why couldn't he have been born in Belgium? Why must almost every foreign national who is lauded in the US be born under the Union Jack?

As loyal tm readers, we understant that Duchies have a certain appeal on this site (note: we much prefer duchesses over duchies).

So what is wrong with the flag of Belgium, which owes its color scheme to the former flag of the Duchy Brabant? This counts for something, no?

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Flag_of_Belgium.svg)

[belgium]

Yikes, the links do not work from above.

Many apologies. Words, or at least those which Gladwell may be capable of composing, can not adequately express my embarrassment. So I must do as a Walloon and correct my mistakes.

The first link:
http://www.gladwell.com/media/index.html

The second link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Flag_of_Belgium.svg